The present invention relates to a board-mounted electronic device including means for fast electric connection of insulated electric wires to an electric circuit on the board. Such a device is particularly useful for producing electronic gas-lighting devices for gas cookers.
In currently used electric/electronic devices, various methods are employed for electrically connecting one or more conducting wires to a circuit printed (or carried) on a board: as shown in EP-A-0177955, U.S. Pat. No. 5,484,456 and EP-A-0727851 the most common consists in soldering the conducting wires to points or seats formed on the printed circuit; another consists in providing the circuit with terminals (normally applied and/or soldered to the board) which are either pressed directly onto the conducting wires, or are designed to receive corresponding male or female connectors fitted beforehand to the wires.
Such connecting systems are obviously slow, complicated, and therefore expensive and difficult to incorporate in automated assembly procedures.
It is an object of the present invention to provide an electronic device enabling electric connection of one or more insulated wires to an electric circuit on the device without incurring the aforementioned drawbacks, and which at the same time is compact and inexpensive.
According to the present invention, there is provided a board-mounted electronic device, in particular a gas-lighting device for gas cookers, as claimed in claim 1.
The terminals may thus be formed integrally with the circuit and the supporting board, which form a single whole, e.g. by being formed by co-molding the board in synthetic plastic resin with respective tracks of the electric circuit defined by semicut metal strips; and the electric wires to be connectedxe2x80x94which may be external wires for connecting the device to the power supply or to a user device, or wires for electrically connecting one or more electronic components on the device to the board-mounted electric circuitxe2x80x94are connected with no soldering or wire terminations required.